Help with Mirror

[Darrenward]

Hi there. Need some advice regarding some work recently carried out. We got our bathroom refurbished and a panelled. We had a large mirror placed on one of the walls and then a wooden bead put around it to fix it. The joiner has fixed it all and unfortunately we hadnt painted the back of the bead. We can now see the reflection of the timber bead and its an eye sore. The frame and the bathroom is all and eggshell white. Is there anything we can do to hide this reflection? Will caulk fo the job? Any help would be much appreciated

 

[hazetimesfive]

I wouldn't use caulk, at best a larger overlapping wooden trim would work, else its remove and redo.

 

[DaveHerns]

How is the bead fixed to the wall ?

 

[Darrenward]

The bead has been fixed with a nailgun so its not going to be easy removed. I was advised against caulk today as it may discolour. Dont know what to do. My plumber said he had seen someone use white tile grout? Its filled the tiny gap which then killed the reflection. Not too sure what way to tackle it.

 

[Mikefromlondon]

@darren, I have just tried to replicate your problem, I can see if I place a piece of wood over the front of the mirror overlapping say a quarter inch, you can see the reflection of its back, I couldn't imagine how bad that would look, so I did little experiment for you! I then placed a small quarter inch wide strip of white paper next to the wooden piece, and bingo! the reflection from the wood disappears or hides behind the paper strip, so what you now need to do is to create an internal border made of thin piece if white plastic material right next to the edge of the inner side of the wooden bead, and stick it to the bead itself or if you must stick it on to the mirror, then the glue will show, so use either double sided tape on the back of the white plastic strip, this itself will give your wooden bead another layer of profile.
Hope this will enable you to overcome problem rather than taking the mirror down.

You may be able to get a thin piece of plastic from many DIY stores in the form of plastic cable trunking covers, and it is a matter of neatly cutting off neat strips out of it.Or use a think strip of wood painted white. Or how about net curtain wire (covered in white plastic) acting as a round bead, tacked to the wooden bead and then filled with caulk at the joint between the wooden bead and the wire, filling up the gap. You now have a wide choice of materials to choose from.

 

[Darrenward]

Thanks Mike for taking the time to have a look at the problem. I understand what u mean. I am off work tomorrow so i will get my head together and see what i can use.

 

[Mikefromlondon]

you may first try using white electrical insulating tape, to see how effective this can hide the timber beading, and if I were you I would use this as it is cheapest solution and though not highly durable, then again one could replace it every few months when it starts peeling off, trim the width of the tape with a straight edge and a knife, just deep enough with right pressure so you don't mark your mirror glass, knife needs to be pretty sharp to give you a very clean burr free cut. You could do this until you find a more suitable material to replace it permanently.

 

[chappers]

take it off and redo it

 

[Mikefromlondon]

Pants man! That would cost more than fitting a new mirror, cause the joiner will charge for his time removing it and painting, than allowing time for paint to dry, and then having to come back again a day of so later to refit!

 

[chappers]

just do it yourself, alternatively you could just leave it or bodge it up with something that would look equally as unsightly, such as electrical tape or net curtain wire.

 

[Mikefromlondon]

Minor things like these can irritate but after a while you get so used to that you don't even blink an eye, your brain gets accustomed to such minor faults, I find that I get quite irritated with minor faults like tiles not level, grout uneven, door frames looking pi$$ed, architrave miter with gaps, or gaps not filled, lines not running parallel, photos hanging unlevelled or even a slight degree of inclination gets my brain in fit, but if you accept that not everyone is perfectionist, and perfection costs money, and costs time, leave it for a while you soon get used to until another perfectionist bum visits your home and points to you such abnormalities and then you tell him hey listen you fat bum, I have better things to worry about! If you start to achieve 100% perfection in everything, life will stall!

If you remain perfectionist, sadly you will fail miserably like I have learnt the hard way, it took me 10 years to refurbish a house where I sacked all builders and joiners because their work really pi$$ed me up so much, when I complained or pointed out the defects or unacceptable quality, and lines, they get mad, no professional builders or anyone likes being pointed how ****e is their workmanship and quality of work, they usually retaliate by picking their tools up and tell me to do it yourself, imagine me overlooking gas safe engineer and telling him he is not doing it right! his eyeballs usually pop out! most do not like being pointed out of any defects, I can find defects nearly in everything, including my own self, that is my biggest defect, being hyper critical, those who do not like my strict perfection workmanship they just abandon, when I invite builders for quotes, and explicitly tell them that I want a very high quality of work, they simply do not turn up, or submit any quote! So I end up doing it all myself and as I am busy in my job, this leaves me little time to achieve anything done on the house.I have lost a fortune.

I am still reluctant to get any professionals in, those who have been doing it for say 10 years automatically assume they are professionals, it is immensely difficult to be a professional, it takes a lot to be a professional, knowledge is not everything, skills and tidiness are just as important. So I end up rather suffer deteriorating things than to get someone to repair or refurb since I am never going to be happy with their workmanship and so why pay them to bodge it, suffering is better as you don't feel too bad having paid someone an arm and a leg and he done a ****ty job!

 

[hansPulesh]

I'd try using white silicone to go around the edges to see if you can fill in enough of the area which you don't want to see. Best thing about this is that if it doesn't work, its easy to remove off of of a mirror and is also a cheap and easy way of doing it.